Sunday

The rising taxpayer bill for sports venues

Deadspin pretty niftily shows how public funding for private arenas and stadiums has increased over the years with this animated infographic, which, at its core, shows that 186 stadiums built since 1900 cost $53.0 billion in 2012 dollars, of which $32.2 billion — or 61% — was publicly financed. That's a heckuva lot of taxpayer money.
My friends at Field of Schemes ought to love this one.

MAC bowls hit or miss

(Note: Stay tuned for my annual ranking of bowl swag, which is one of the blogs I enjoy writing most. Here's last year's installment.)
In the meantime, though, SI.com's Stewart Mandel ranks all the bowls. With the MAC's seven bids, there's some good and some bad. (Rankings are out of 35.)
5. Orange Bowl (Northern Illinois vs. Florida State): This could be another Boise State-Oklahoma, or it could turn into another Georgia-Hawaii. Either way, it's a chance to see Huskies star Jordan Lynch, a quarterback who has run for 1,771 yards, test himself against an elite D.
13. GoDaddy.com Bowl (Kent State vs. Arkansas State)
21. Independence (Ohio vs. Louisiana-Monroe)
22. Military (Bowling Green vs. San Jose State)
24. Idaho Potato (Toledo vs. Utah State)
31. Beef O'Brady's (Ball State vs. Central Florida)
34. Little Caesars (Central Michigan vs. Western Kentucky)

Back to baseball TV

As a sale of the Dolan family's SportsTime Ohio network appears to be imminent — here's our print story this week (subscriber only), and here's why I'm staying away from most things baseball — here's a good baseball trend story for mid-market teams:
Instead of skyrocketing TV revenues, those teams must rely on attendance, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch writes.
“I think it points to our need to develop our own players and not rely on free agency for players, but more to use it as a way to complement our team and fill out our team,” DeWitt said. “The goal for us is to draft, develop, and play our own players and then retain them. Historically we've been fortunate to keep many of the core players with us as they hit free agency.”

Back to school

On Monday, I wrote about the rising number of schools doing naming rights and other sponsorship deals, after Lakewood City Schools and First Federal Lakewood inked a $320,000 deal.
From a reader in Cincinnati:
The district I reside in, Loveland City Schools, has benefited greatly from private gifts. Covering most of the 45140 zip code, the district has approx. 4,400 students, 1,500 at the high school level. The Loveland Boosters have put thousands into the middle school athletic facility field and have since covered the installation of the high school's $550,000 new artificial turf field. Five years ago, only the private high schools and top districts had turf; now (almost) everyone has it. In addition, the boosters are currently building a new $575,000 weight room for the high school, a great upgrade to say the least.
In Greater Cleveland, I've seen a ton of high school facilities through my work as a freelancer covering high school sports; it's true, many, many schools have turf now, including plenty of public schools. It's an expensive proposition, but it does save on maintenance costs and eventual headaches when grass fields are mush by the end of fall sports.
If you're not following me on Twitter, what are you waiting for? And, I trust you're listening to Crain's podcasts?
And, of course, email me with any news tips you see fit for this space.

MORNING ROUNDUP

Business headlines from Crain's Cleveland Business and other Ohio newspapers — delivered FREE to your inbox every morning. Sign up for the Morning Newsletter.